"Well, it's catching. Caught it from Gearson. I guess it won't be muchof a war, and I guess Gearson don't think so, either. The other fellowswill back down as soon as they see we mean it. I wouldn't lose any sleepover it. I'm going back to bed, myself."

* * * * *

Gearson came again next afternoon, looking pale and rather sick, butquite himself, even to his languid irony. "I guess I'd better tell you,Editha, that I consecrated myself to your god of battles last night bypouring too many libations to him down my own throat. But I'm all rightnow. One has to carry off the excitement, somehow."

"Promise me," she commanded, "that you'll never touch it again!"

"What! Not let the cannikin clink? Not let the soldier drink? Well, Ipromise."

"You don't belong to yourself now; you don't even belong to _me_. Youbelong to your country, and you have a sacred charge to keep yourselfstrong and well for your country's sake. I have been thinking, thinkingall night and all day long."

"You look as if you had been crying a little, too," he said, with hisqueer smile.

"That's all past. I've been thinking, and worshipping _you_. Don't yousuppose I know all that you've been through, to come to this? I'vefollowed you every step from your old theories and opinions."

"Well, you've had a long row to hoe."

"And I know you've done this from the highest motives--"

"Oh, there won't be much pettifogging to do till this cruel war is--"

"And you haven't simply done it for my sake. I couldn't respect you ifyou had."

"Well, then we'll say I haven't. A man that hasn't got his own respectintact wants the respect of all the other people he can corner. But wewon't go into that. I'm in for the thing now, and we've got to face ourfuture. My idea is that this isn't going to be a very protractedstruggle; we shall just scare the enemy to death before it comes to afight at all. But we must provide for contingencies, Editha. If anythinghappens to me--"

"Oh, George!" She clung to him, sobbing.

"I don't want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hatethat, wherever I happened to be."

"I am yours, for time and eternity--time and eternity." She liked thewords; they satisfied her famine for phrases.

"Well, say eternity; that's all right; but time's another thing; and I'mtalking about time. But there is something! My mother! If anythinghappens--"

She winced, and he laughed. "You're not the bold soldier-girl ofyesterday!" Then he sobered. "If anything happens, I want you to help mymother out. She won't like my doing this thing. She brought me up tothink war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in theCivil War; all through it; lost his arm in it." She thrilled with thesense of the arm round her; what if that should be lost? He laughed asif divining her: "Oh, it doesn't run in the family, as far as I know!"Then he added, gravely: "He came home with misgivings about war, andthey grew on him. I guess he and mother agreed between them that I wasto be brought up in his final mind about it; but that was before mytime. I only knew him from my mother's report of him and his opinions; Idon't know whether they were hers first; but they were hers last. Thiswill be a blow to her. I shall have to write and tell her--"

He stopped, and she asked: "Would you like me to write, too, George?"

"I don't believe that would do. No, I'll do the writing. She'llunderstand a little if I say that I thought the way to minimize it wasto make war on the largest possible scale at once--that I felt I musthave been helping on the war somehow if I hadn't helped keep it fromcoming, and I knew I hadn't; when it came, I had no right to stay out ofit."

Whether his sophistries satisfied him or not, they satisfied her. Sheclung to his breast, and whispered, with closed eyes and quivering lips:"Yes, yes, yes!"

"But if anything should happen, you might go to her and see what youcould do for her. You know? It's rather far off; she can't leave herchair--"

"Oh, I'll go, if it's the ends of the earth! But nothing will happen!Nothing _can_! I--"

She felt herself lifted with his rising, and Gearson was saying, withhis arm still round her, to her father: "Well, we're off at once, Mr.Balcom. We're to be formally accepted at the capital, and then bunchedup with the rest somehow, and sent into camp somewhere, and got to thefront as soon as possible. We all want to be in the van, of course;we're the first company to report to the Governor. I came to tellEditha, but I hadn't got round to it."

* * * * *

She saw him again for a moment at the capital, in the station, justbefore the train started southward with his regiment. He looked well, inhis uniform, and very soldierly, but somehow girlish, too, with hisclean-shaven face and slim figure. The manly eyes and the strong voicesatisfied her, and his preoccupation with some unexpected details ofduty flattered her. Other girls were weeping and bemoaning themselves,but she felt a sort of noble distinction in the abstraction, the almostunconsciousness, with which they parted. Only at the last moment hesaid: "Don't forget my mother. It mayn't be such a walk-over as Isupposed," and he laughed at the notion.

He waved his hand to her as the train moved off--she knew it among ascore of hands that were waved to other girls from the platform of thecar, for it held a letter which she knew was hers. Then he went insidethe car to read it, doubtless, and she did not see him again. But shefelt safe for him through the strength of what she called her love. Whatshe called her God, always speaking the name in a deep voice and withthe implication of a mutual understanding, would watch over him and keephim and bring him back to her. If with an empty sleeve, then he shouldhave three arms instead of two, for both of hers should be his for life.She did not see, though, why she should always be thinking of the armhis father had lost.

There were not many letters from him, but they were such as she couldhave wished, and she put her whole strength into making hers such as sheimagined he could have wished, glorifying and supporting him. She wroteto his mother glorifying him as their hero, but the brief answer she gotwas merely to the effect that Mrs. Gearson was not well enough to writeherself, and thanking her for her letter by the hand of some one whocalled herself "Yrs truly, Mrs. W.J. Andrews."

Editha determined not to be hurt, but to write again quite as if theanswer had been all she expected. Before it seemed as if she could havewritten, there came news of the first skirmish, and in the list of thekilled, which was telegraphed as a trifling loss on our side, wasGearson's name. There was a frantic time of trying to make out that itmight be, must be, some other Gearson; but the name and the company andthe regiment and the State were too definitely given.

Then there was a lapse into depths out of which it seemed as if shenever could rise again; then a lift into clouds far above all grief,black clouds, that blotted out the sun, but where she soared with him,with George--George! She had the fever that she expected of herself, butshe did not die in it; she was not even delirious, and it did not lastlong. When she was well enough to leave her bed, her one thought was ofGeorge's mother, of his strangely worded wish that she should go to herand see what she could do for her. In the exaltation of the duty laidupon her--it buoyed her up instead of burdening her--she rapidlyrecovered.

Her father went with her on the long railroad journey from northern NewYork to western Iowa; he had business out at Davenport, and he said hecould just as well go then as any other time; and he went with her tothe little country town where George's mother lived in a little houseon the edge of the illimitable cornfields, under trees pushed to a topof the rolling prairie. George's father had settled there after theCivil War, as so many other old soldiers had done; but they were Easternpeople, and Editha fancied touches of the East in the June roseoverhanging the front door, and the garden with early summer flowersstretching from the gate of the paling fence.

It was very low inside the house, and so dim, with the closed blinds,that they could scarcely see one another: Editha tall and black in hercrapes which filled the air with the smell of their dyes; her fatherstanding decorously apart with his hat on his forearm, as at funerals; awoman rested in a deep arm-chair, and the woman who had let thestrangers in stood behind the chair.

The seated woman turned her head round and up, and asked the womanbehind her chair: "_Who_ did you say?"

Editha, if she had done what she expected of herself, would have gonedown on her knees at the feet of the seated figure and said, "I amGeorge's Editha," for answer.

But instead of her own voice she heard that other woman's voice, saying:"Well, I don't know as I _did_ get the name just right. I guess I'llhave to make a little more light in here," and she went and pushed twoof the shutters ajar.

Then Editha's father said, in his public will-now-address-a-few-remarkstone: "My name is Balcom, ma'am--Junius H. Balcom, of Balcom's Works,New York; my daughter--"

Mrs. Gearson gave him no heed. "I suppose you would have been glad todie, such a brave person as you! I don't believe _he_ was glad to die.He was always a timid boy, that way; he was afraid of a good manythings; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. Isuppose he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him by whatit cost me when I heard of it. I had been through _one_ war before.When you sent him you didn't expect he would get killed."

The voice seemed to compassionate Editha, and it was time. "No," shehuskily murmured.

"No, girls don't; women don't, when they give their men up to theircountry. They think they'll come marching back, somehow, just as gay asthey went, or if it's an empty sleeve, or even an empty pantaloon, it'sall the more glory, and they're so much the prouder of them, poorthings!"

The tears began to run down Editha's face; she had not wept till then;but it was now such a relief to be understood that the tears came.

"No, you didn't expect him to get killed," Mrs. Gearson repeated, in avoice which was startlingly like George's again. "You just expected himto kill some one else, some of those foreigners, that weren't therebecause they had any say about it, but because they had to be there,poor wretches--conscripts, or whatever they call 'em. You thought itwould be all right for my George, _your_ George, to kill the sons ofthose miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you wouldnever see the faces of." The woman lifted her powerful voice in apsalmlike note. "I thank my God he didn't live to do it! I thank my Godthey killed him first, and that he ain't livin' with their blood on hishands!" She dropped her eyes, which she had raised with her voice, andglared at Editha. "What you got that black on for?" She lifted herselfby her powerful arms so high that her helpless body seemed to hang limpits full length. "Take it off, take it off, before I tear it from yourback!"

The lady who was passing the summer near Balcom's Works was sketchingEditha's beauty, which lent itself wonderfully to the effects of acolorist. It had come to that confidence which is rather apt to growbetween artist and sitter, and Editha had told her everything.

"To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!" the lady said.She added: "I suppose there are people who feel that way about war. Butwhen you consider the good this war has done--how much it has done forthe country! I can't understand such people, for my part. And when youhad come all the way out there to console her--got up out of a sick-bed!Well!"

"I think," Editha said, magnanimously, "she wasn't quite in her rightmind; and so did papa."

"Yes," the lady said, looking at Editha's lips in nature and then at herlips in art, and giving an empirical touch to them in the picture. "Buthow dreadful of her! How perfectly--excuse me--how _vulgar_!"

A light broke upon Editha in the darkness which she felt had beenwithout a gleam of brightness for weeks and months. The mystery that hadbewildered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rosefrom grovelling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again in theideal.

VI

BRAYBRIDGE'S OFFER

We had ordered our dinners and were sitting in the Turkish room at theclub, waiting to be called, each in his turn, to the dining-room. It wasalways a cosey place, whether you found yourself in it with cigars andcoffee after dinner, or with whatever liquid or solid appetizer youpreferred in the half-hour or more that must pass before dinner afteryou had made out your menu. It intimated an exclusive possession in thethree or four who happened first to find themselves together in it, andit invited the philosophic mind to contemplation more than any otherspot in the club.

Our rather limited little down-town dining-club was almost a celibatecommunity at most times. A few husbands and fathers joined us at lunch;but at dinner we were nearly always a company of bachelors, dropping inan hour or so before we wished to dine, and ordering from a bill of farewhat we liked. Some dozed away in the intervening time; some read theevening papers or played chess; I preferred the chance society of theTurkish room. I could be pretty sure of finding Wanhope there in thesesympathetic moments, and where Wanhope was there would probably beRulledge, passively willing to listen and agree, and Minver ready tointerrupt and dispute. I myself liked to look in and linger for eitherthe reasoning or the bickering, as it happened, and now, seeing thethree there together, I took a provisional seat behind the painter, whomade no sign of knowing I was present. Rulledge was eating a caviarsandwich, which he had brought from the afternoon tea-table near by, andhe greedily incited Wanhope to go on, in the polite pause which thepsychologist had let follow on my appearance, with what he was saying. Iwas not surprised to find that his talk related to a fact just thenintensely interesting to the few, rapidly becoming the many, who wereprivy to it; though Wanhope had the air of stooping to it from a higherrange of thinking.

"I shouldn't have supposed, somehow," he said, with a knot ofdeprecation between his fine eyes, "that he would have had the pluck."

"I don't see why you say that, Minver," Rulledge interposed,chivalrously, with his mouth full of sandwich.

"I didn't say it," Minver contradicted.

"You implied it; and I don't think it's fair. It's easy enough to buildup a report of that kind on the half-knowledge of rumor which is allthat any outsider can have in the case."

"So far," Minver said, with unbroken tranquillity, "as any such edificehas been erected, you are the architect, Rulledge. I shouldn't think youwould like to go round insinuating that sort of thing. Here is Acton,"and he now acknowledged my presence with a backward twist of his head,"on the alert for material already. You ought to be more careful whereActon is, Rulledge."

"It would be great copy if it were true," I owned.

Wanhope regarded us all three, in this play of our qualities, with thescientific impartiality of a bacteriologist in the study of a cultureoffering some peculiar incidents. He took up a point as remote as mightbe from the personal appeal. "It is curious how little we know of suchmatters, after all the love-making and marrying in life and all theinquiry of the poets and novelists." He addressed himself in this turnof his thought, half playful, half earnest, to me, as if I united withthe functions of both a responsibility for their shortcomings.

"Yes," Minver said, facing about towards me. "How do you excuse yourselffor your ignorance in matters where you're always professionally makingsuch a bluff of knowledge? After all the marriages you have broughtabout in literature, can you say positively and specifically how theyare brought about in life?"

"No, I can't," I admitted. "I might say that a writer of fiction is agood deal like a minister who continually marries people without knowingwhy."

"No, you couldn't, my dear fellow," the painter retorted. "It's part ofyour swindle to assume that you _do_ know why. You ought to find out."

Wanhope interposed concretely, or as concretely as he could: "Theimportant thing would always be to find which of the lovers theconfession, tacit or explicit, began with."

"Acton ought to go round and collect human documents bearing on thequestion. He ought to have got together thousands of specimens fromnature. He ought to have gone to all the married couples he knew, andasked them just how their passion was confessed; he ought to have sentout printed circulars, with tabulated questions. Why don't you do it,Acton?"

I returned, as seriously as could have been expected:

"Perhaps it would be thought rather intimate. People don't like to talkof such things."

"They're ashamed," Minver declared. "The lovers don't either of them, ina given case, like to let others know how much the woman had to do withmaking the offer, and how little the man."

Minver's point provoked both Wanhope and myself to begin a remark at thesame time. We begged each other's pardon, and Wanhope insisted that Ishould go on.

"Oh, merely this," I said. "I don't think they're so much ashamed asthat they have forgotten the different stages. You were going to say--?"

"Very much what you said. It's astonishing how people forget the vitalthings and remember trifles. Or perhaps as we advance from stage tostage what once seemed the vital things turn to trifles. Nothing can bemore vital in the history of a man and a woman than how they becamehusband and wife, and yet not merely the details, but the main fact,would seem to escape record if not recollection. The next generationsknows nothing of it."

"I've ventured to make some inquiries in that region at one time. Notdirectly, of course. At second and third hand. It isn't inconceivable,if we conceive of a life after this, that a man should forget, in itsmore important interests and occupations, just how he quitted thisworld, or at least the particulars of the article of death. Of course,we must suppose a good portion of eternity to have elapsed." Wanhopecontinued, dreamily, with a deep breath almost equivalent to somethingso unscientific as a sigh: "Women are charming, and in nothing morethan the perpetual challenge they form for us. They are born defying usto match ourselves with them."

"Nothing so concrete, I'm afraid," Wanhope gently returned. "I mean, tomatch them in graciousness, in loveliness, in all the agile contests ofspirit and plays of fancy. It's pathetic to see them caught up intosomething more serious in that other game, which they are so good at."

"They seem rather to like it, though, some of them, if you mean the gameof love," Minver said. "Especially when they're not in earnest aboutit."

"Oh, there are plenty of spoiled women," Wanhope admitted. "But I don'tmean flirting. I suppose that the average unspoiled woman is ratherfrightened than otherwise when she knows that a man is in love withher."

"Do you suppose she always knows it first?" Rulledge asked.

"You may be sure," Minver answered for Wanhope, "that if she didn't knowit, _he_ never would." Then Wanhope answered for himself:

"I think that generally she sees it coming. In that sort of wirelesstelegraphy, that reaching out of two natures through space towards eachother, her more sensitive apparatus probably feels the appeal of hisbefore he is conscious of having made any appeal."

"And her first impulse is to escape the appeal?" I suggested.

"Yes," Wanhope admitted, after a thoughtful reluctance.

"Even when she is half aware of having invited it?"

"If she is not spoiled she is never aware of having invited it. Takethe case in point; we won't mention any names. She is sailing throughtime, through youthful space, with her electrical lures, the naturalequipment of every charming woman, all out, and suddenly, somewhere fromthe unknown, she feels the shock of a response in the gulfs of air wherethere had been no life before. But she can't be said to have knowinglysearched the void for any presence."

"Oh, I'm not sure about that, Professor," Minver put in. "Go a littleslower, if you expect me to follow you."

"It's all a mystery, the most beautiful mystery of life," Wanhoperesumed. "I don't believe I could make out the case as I feel it to be."

"Braybridge's part of the case is rather plain, isn't it?" I invitedhim.

"I'm not sure of that. No man's part of any case is plain, if you lookat it carefully. The most that you can say of Braybridge is that he israther a simple nature. But nothing," the psychologist added, with oneof his deep breaths, "is so complex as a simple nature."

"Well," Minver contended, "Braybridge is plain, if his case isn't."

"Plain? Is he plain?" Wanhope asked, as if asking himself.

"My dear fellow, you agnostics doubt everything!"

"I should have said picturesque. Picturesque, with the sort ofunbeautifulness that takes the fancy of women more than Greekproportion. I think it would require a girl peculiarly feminine to feelthe attraction of such a man--the fascination of his being grizzled andslovenly and rugged. She would have to be rather a wild, shy girl to dothat, and it would have to be through her fear of him that she woulddivine his fear of her. But what I have heard is that they met underrather exceptional circumstances. It was at a house in the Adirondacks,where Braybridge was, somewhat in the quality of a bull in a china-shop.He was lugged in by the host, as an old friend, and was suffered by thehostess as a friend quite too old for her. At any rate, as I heard (andI don't vouch for the facts, all of them), Braybridge found himself atodds with the gay young people who made up the hostess's end of theparty, and was watching for a chance to--"

Wanhope cast about for the word, and Minver supplied it--"Pull out."

"Yes. But when he had found it Miss Hazelwood took it from him."

"I don't understand," Rulledge said.

"When he came in to breakfast, the third morning, prepared with anexcuse for cutting his week down to the dimensions it had reached, hesaw her sitting alone at the table. She had risen early as a consequenceof having arrived late the night before; and when Braybridge foundhimself in for it, he forgot that he meant to go away, and saidgood-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found themtalking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, andintroduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim atsecond hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from hiswife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwoodwere getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because onewas as badly frightened as the other. It was a novel experience forboth. Ever seen her?"

We looked at one another. Minver said: "I never wanted to paint any oneso much. It was at the spring show of the American Artists. There was ajam of people; but this girl--I've understood it was she--looked asmuch alone as if there were nobody else there. She might have been astartled doe in the North Woods suddenly coming out on atwenty-thousand-dollar camp, with a lot of twenty-million-dollar peopleon the veranda."

"And you wanted to do her as The Startled Doe," I said. "Good sellingname."

"Don't reduce it to the vulgarity of fiction. I admit it would be aselling name."

"Go on, Wanhope," Rulledge puffed impatiently. "Though I don't see howthere could be another soul in the universe as constitutionally scaredof men as Braybridge is of women."

"In the universe nothing is wasted, I suppose. Everything has itscomplement, its response. For every bashful man, there must be a bashfulwoman," Wanhope returned.

"Or a bold one," Minver suggested.

"No; the response must be in kind to be truly complemental. Through thesense of their reciprocal timidity they divine that they needn't beafraid."

"Oh! _That's_ the way you get out of it!"

"Well?" Rulledge urged.

"I'm afraid," Wanhope modestly confessed, "that from this point I shallhave to be largely conjectural. Welkin wasn't able to be very definite,except as to moments, and he had his data almost altogether from hiswife. Braybridge had told him overnight that he thought of going, and hehad said he mustn't think of it; but he supposed Braybridge had spokenof it to Mrs. Welkin, and he began by saying to his wife that he hopedshe had refused to hear of Braybridge's going. She said she hadn't heardof it, but now she would refuse without hearing, and she didn't giveBraybridge any chance to protest. If people went in the middle of theirweek, what would become of other people? She was not going to have theequilibrium of her party disturbed, and that was all about it. Welkinthought it was odd that Braybridge didn't insist; and he made a longstory of it. But the grain of wheat in his bushel of chaff was that MissHazelwood seemed to be fascinated by Braybridge from the first. WhenMrs. Welkin scared him into saying that he would stay his week out, thebusiness practically was done. They went picnicking that day in eachother's charge; and after Braybridge left he wrote back to her, as Mrs.Welkin knew from the letters that passed through her hands, and--Well,their engagement has come out, and--" Wanhope paused, with an air thatwas at first indefinite, and then definitive.

"You don't mean," Rulledge burst out in a note of deep wrong, "thatthat's all you know about it?"

"Yes, that's all I know," Wanhope confessed, as if somewhat surprisedhimself at the fact.

"Well!"

Wanhope tried to offer the only reparation in his power. "I canconjecture--we can all conjecture--"

"Why--" Wanhope began again; but at that moment a man who had beenelected the year before, and then gone off on a long absence, put hishead in between the dull-red hangings of the doorway. It was Halson,whom I did not know very well, but liked better than I knew. His eyeswere dancing with what seemed the inextinguishable gayety of histemperament, rather than any present occasion, and his smile carried hislittle mustache well away from his handsome teeth. "Private?"

"Come in! come in!" Minver called to him. "Thought you were in Japan?"

"My dear fellow," Halson answered, "you must brush up your contemporaryhistory. It's more than a fortnight since I was in Japan." He shookhands with me, and I introduced him to Rulledge and Wanhope. He said atonce: "Well, what is it? Question of Braybridge's engagement? It'shumiliating to a man to come back from the antipodes and find the nationabsorbed in a parochial problem like that. Everybody I've met hereto-night has asked me, the first thing, if I'd heard of it, and if Iknew how it could have happened."

"Of course," Halson said, with intelligence. "But I doubt if he'd findher as paintable as she looks, at first. She's beautiful, but her charmis spiritual."

"Sometimes we try for that," the painter interposed.

"And sometimes you get it. But you'll allow it's difficult. That's all Imeant. I've known her--let me see--for twelve years, at least; eversince I first went West. She was about eleven then, and her father wasbringing her up on the ranch. Her aunt came along by and by and took herto Europe--mother dead before Hazelwood went out there. But the girl wasalways homesick for the ranch; she pined for it; and after they had kepther in Germany three or four years they let her come back and run wildagain--wild as a flower does, or a vine, not a domesticated animal."

"Go slow, Halson. This is getting too much for the romantic Rulledge."

"Rulledge can bear up against the facts, I guess, Minver," Halson said,almost austerely. "Her father died two years ago, and then she _had_ tocome East, for her aunt simply _wouldn't_ live on the ranch. She broughther on here, and brought her out; I was at the coming-out tea; but thegirl didn't take to the New York thing at all; I could see it from thestart; she wanted to get away from it with me, and talk about theranch."

"She felt that she was with the only genuine person among thoseconventional people."

Halson laughed at Minver's thrust, and went on amiably: "I don't supposethat till she met Braybridge she was ever quite at her ease with anyman--or woman, for that matter. I imagine, as you've done, that it washis fear of her that gave her courage. She met him on equal terms. Isn'tthat it?"

Wanhope assented to the question referred to him with a nod.

"And when they got lost from the rest of the party at that picnic--"

"Lost?" Rulledge demanded.

"Why, yes. Didn't you know? But I ought to go back. They said therenever was anything prettier than the way she unconsciously went forBraybridge the whole day. She wanted him, and she was a child who wantedthings frankly when she did want them. Then his being ten or fifteenyears older than she was, and so large and simple, made it natural for ashy girl like her to assort herself with him when all the rest wereassorting themselves, as people do at such things. The consensus oftestimony is that she did it with the most transparent unconsciousness,and--"

"Who are your authorities?" Minver asked; Rulledge threw himself back onthe divan and beat the cushions with impatience.

"Is it essential to give them?"

"Oh no. I merely wondered. Go on."

"The authorities are all right. She had disappeared with him before theothers noticed. It was a thing that happened; there was no design in it;that would have been out of character. They had got to the end of thewood-road, and into the thick of the trees where there wasn't even atrail, and they walked round looking for a way out till they were turnedcompletely. They decided that the only way was to keep walking, and byand by they heard the sound of chopping. It was some Canucks clearing apiece of the woods, and when she spoke to them in French they gave themfull directions, and Braybridge soon found the path again."

Halson paused, and I said: "But that isn't all?"

"Oh no." He continued thoughtfully silent for a little while before heresumed. "The amazing thing is that they got lost again, and that whenthey tried going back to the Canucks they couldn't find the way."

"Why didn't they follow the sound of the chopping?" I asked.

"The Canucks had stopped, for the time being. Besides, Braybridge wasrather ashamed, and he thought if they went straight on they would besure to come out somewhere. But that was where he made a mistake. Theycouldn't go on straight; they went round and round, and came on theirown footsteps--or hers, which he recognized from the narrow tread andthe dint of the little heels in the damp places."

Wanhope roused himself with a kindling eye. "That is very interesting,the movement in a circle of people who have lost their way. It has oftenbeen observed, but I don't know that it has ever been explained.Sometimes the circle is smaller, sometimes it is larger, but I believeit is always a circle."

"Isn't it," I queried, "like any other error in life? We go round andround, and commit the old sins over again."

"That is very interesting," Wanhope allowed.

"But do lost people really always walk in a vicious circle?" Minverasked.

Rulledge would not let Wanhope answer. "Go on, Halson," he said.

Halson roused himself from the revery in which he was sitting withglazed eyes. "Well, what made it a little more anxious was that he hadheard of bears on that mountain, and the green afternoon light among thetrees was perceptibly paling. He suggested shouting, but she wouldn'tlet him; she said it would be ridiculous if the others heard them, anduseless if they didn't. So they tramped on till--till the accidenthappened."

"The accident!" Rulledge exclaimed, in the voice of our joint emotion.

"He stepped on a loose stone and turned his foot," Halson explained. "Itwasn't a sprain, luckily, but it hurt enough. He turned so white thatshe noticed it, and asked him what was the matter. Of course that shuthis mouth the closer, but it morally doubled his motive, and he kepthimself from crying out till the sudden pain of the wrench was over. Hesaid merely that he thought he had heard something, and he had an awfulringing in his ears; but he didn't mean that, and he started on again.The worst was trying to walk without limping, and to talk cheerfully andencouragingly with that agony tearing at him. But he managed somehow,and he was congratulating himself on his success when he tumbled down ina dead faint."

"Oh, come now!" Minver protested.

"It _is_ like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated byaccident instead of motive, isn't it?" Halson smiled with radiantrecognition.

"Fact will always imitate fiction, if you give her time enough," I said.

"Had they got back to the other picnickers?" Rulledge asked, with atense voice.

"In sound, but not in sight of them. She wasn't going to bring him intocamp in that state; besides, she couldn't. She got some water out of thetrout-brook they'd been fishing--more water than trout in it--andsprinkled his face, and he came to, and got on his legs just in time topull on to the others, who were organizing a search-party to go afterthem. From that point on she dropped Braybridge like a hot coal; and asthere was nothing of the flirt in her, she simply kept with the women,the older girls, and the tabbies, and left Braybridge to worry alongwith the secret of his turned ankle. He doesn't know how he ever gothome alive; but he did, somehow, manage to reach the wagons that hadbrought them to the edge of the woods, and then he was all right tillthey got to the house. But still she said nothing about his accident,and he couldn't; and he pleaded an early start for town the nextmorning, and got off to bed as soon as he could."

"I shouldn't have thought he could have stirred in the morning,"Rulledge employed Halson's pause to say.

"Well, this beaver _had_ to," Halson said. "He was not the only earlyriser. He found Miss Hazelwood at the station before him."

"She came right towards him. 'Mr. Braybridge,' says she, 'I couldn't letyou go without explaining my very strange behavior. I didn't choose tohave these people laughing at the notion of _my_ having played the partof your preserver. It was bad enough being lost with you; I couldn'tbring you into ridicule with them by the disproportion they'd have feltin my efforts for you after you turned your foot. So I simply had toignore the incident. Don't you see?' Braybridge glanced at her, and hehad never felt so big and bulky before, or seen her so slender andlittle. He said, 'It _would_ have seemed rather absurd,' and he brokeout and laughed, while she broke down and cried, and asked him toforgive her, and whether it had hurt him very much; and said she knew hecould bear to keep it from the others by the way he had kept it from hertill he fainted. She implied that he was morally as well as physicallygigantic, and it was as much as he could do to keep from taking her inhis arms on the spot."

"It would have been edifying to the groom that had driven her to thestation," Minver cynically suggested.

"Groom nothing!" Halson returned with spirit. "She paddled herselfacross the lake, and walked from the boat-landing to the station."

"Jove!" Rulledge exploded in uncontrollable enthusiasm.

"She turned round as soon as she had got through with her hymn ofpraise--it made Braybridge feel awfully flat--and ran back through thebushes to the boat-landing, and--that was the last he saw of her till hemet her in town this fall."

"Yes, that's the point, Halson," Minver interposed. "Your story is allvery well, as far as it goes; but Rulledge here has been insinuatingthat it was Miss Hazelwood who made the offer, and he wants you to bearhim out."

Rulledge winced at the outrage, but he would not stay Halson's answereven for the sake of righting himself.

"I _have_ heard," Minver went on, "that Braybridge insisted on paddlingthe canoe back to the other shore for her, and that it was on the waythat he offered himself." We others stared at Minver in astonishment.Halson glanced covertly towards him with his gay eyes. "Then that wasn'ttrue?"

"How did you hear it?" Halson asked.

"Oh, never mind. Is it true?"

"Well, I know there's that version," Halson said, evasively. "Theengagement is only just out, as you know. As to the offer--the when andthe how--I don't know that I'm exactly at liberty to say."

Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtivepassage of his eye over Rulledge's intense face. "There was somethingrather nice happened after--But, really, now!"

"Oh, go on!" Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.

"I haven't the right--Well, I suppose I'm on safe ground here? It won'tgo any further, of course; and it _was_ so pretty! After she had pushedoff in her canoe, you know, Braybridge--he'd followed her down to theshore of the lake--found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught,and he held it up, and called out to her. She looked round and saw it,and called back: 'Never mind. I can't return for it now.' ThenBraybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, andshe said 'Yes,' over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, andsaid: 'No, no, you mustn't, you mustn't! You can send it to me.' Heasked where, and she said: 'In New York--in the fall--at theWalholland.' Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted afterher--she was paddling on again--'May I _bring_ it?' and she called overher shoulder again, without fully facing him, but her profile wasenough: 'If you can't get any one to bring it for you.' The words barelyreached him, but he'd have caught them if they'd been whispered; and hewatched her across the lake and into the bushes, and then broke for histrain. He was just in time."

Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said: "Yes, that'srather nice." After a moment he added: "Rulledge thinks she put itthere."

"You're too bad, Minver," Halson protested. "The charm of the wholething was her perfect innocence. She isn't capable of the slightestfinesse. I've known her from a child, and I know what I say."

"That innocence of girlhood," Wanhope said, "is very interesting. It'sastonishing how much experience it survives. Some women carry it intoold age with them. It's never been scientifically studied--"

"Yes," Minver allowed. "There would be a fortune for the novelist whocould work a type of innocence for all it was worth. Here's Acton alwaysdealing with the most rancid flirtatiousness, and missing the sweetnessand beauty of a girlhood which does the cheekiest things without knowingwhat it's about, and fetches down its game whenever it shuts its eyesand fires at nothing. But I don't see how all this touches the pointthat Rulledge makes, or decides which finally made the offer."

"Well, hadn't the offer already been made?"

"But how?"

"Oh, in the usual way."

"What is the usual way?"

"I thought everybody knew _that_. Of course, it was _from_ Braybridgefinally, but I suppose it's always six of one and half a dozen of theother in these cases, isn't it? I dare say he couldn't get any one totake her the handkerchief. My dinner?" Halson looked up at the silentwaiter, who had stolen upon us and was bowing towards him.

"Look here, Halson," Minver detained him, "how is it none of the rest ofus have heard all those details?"

Wanhope observed, musingly: "I suppose he's quite right about thereciprocality of the offer, as we call it. There's probably, inninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a perfect understanding beforethere's an explanation. In many cases the offer and the acceptance mustreally be tacit."

"Yes," I ventured, "and I don't know why we're so severe with women whenthey seem to take the initiative. It's merely, after all, the call ofthe maiden bird, and there's nothing lovelier or more endearing innature than that."

"Maiden bird is good, Acton," Minver approved. "Why don't you institutea class of fiction where the love-making is all done by the maidenbirds, as you call them--or the widow birds? It would be tremendouslypopular with both sexes. It would lift an immense responsibility off thebirds who've been expected to shoulder it heretofore if it could beintroduced into real life."

Rulledge fetched a long, simple-hearted sigh. "Well, it's a charmingstory. How well he told it!"

The waiter came again, and this time signalled to Minver.

"Yes," he said, as he rose. "What a pity you can't believe a word Halsonsays."

"Do you mean--" we began simultaneously.

"That he built the whole thing from the ground up, with the start thatwe had given him. Why, you poor things! Who could have told him how itall happened? Braybridge? Or the girl? As Wanhope began by saying,people don't speak of their love-making, even when they distinctlyremember it."

"Yes, but see here, Minver!" Rulledge said, with a dazed look. "If it'sall a fake of his, how came _you_ to have heard of Braybridge paddlingthe canoe back for her?"

"That was the fake that tested the fake. When he adopted it, I _knew_ hewas lying, because I was lying myself. And then the cheapness of thewhole thing! I wonder that didn't strike you. It's the stuff that athousand summer-girl stories have been spun out of. Acton might havethought he was writing it!"

He went away, leaving us to a blank silence, till Wanhope managed tosay: "That inventive habit of mind is very curious. It would beinteresting to know just how far it imposes on the inventor himself--howmuch he believes of his own fiction."

"I don't see," Rulledge said, gloomily, "why they're so long with mydinner." Then he burst out: "I believe every word Halson said! Ifthere's any fake in the thing, it's the fake that Minver owned to."

VII

THE CHICK OF THE EASTER EGG

The old fellow who told that story of dream-transference on asleeping-car at Christmas-time was again at the club on Easter Eve.Halson had put him up for the winter, under the easy rule we had, and hehad taken very naturally to the Turkish room for his after-dinner coffeeand cigar. We all rather liked him, though it was Minver's pose to becritical of the simple friendliness with which he made himself at homeamong us, and to feign a wish that there were fewer trains betweenBoston and New York, so that old Newton (that was his name) could have abetter chance of staying away. But we noticed that Minver was always awilling listener to Newton's talk, and that he sometimes hospitablyoffered to share his tobacco with the Bostonian. When brought to bookfor his inconsistency by Rulledge, he said he was merely welcoming thenew blood, if not young blood, that Newton was infusing into our body,which had grown anaemic on Wanhope's psychology and Rulledge's romance;or, anyway, it was a change.

Newton now began by saying abruptly, in a fashion he had, "We used tohear a good deal in Boston about your Easter Parade here in New York. Doyou still keep it up?"

No one else answering, Minver replied, presently, "I believe it is stillgoing on. I understand that it's composed mostly of milliners out tosee one another's new hats, and generous Jewesses who are willing tocontribute the 'dark and bright' of the beauty in which they walk to theobservance of an alien faith. It's rather astonishing how the synagoguetakes to the feasts of the church. If it were not for that, I don't knowwhat would become of Christmas."

"What do you mean by their walking in beauty?" Rulledge asked over hisshoulder.

"I shall never have the measure of your ignorance, Rulledge. You don'teven know Byron's lines on Hebrew loveliness?

"'She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes.'"

"Pretty good," Rulledge assented. "And they _are_ splendid, sometimes.But what has the Easter Parade got to do with it?" he asked Newton.

"Oh, only what everything has with everything else. I was thinking ofEaster-time long ago and far away, and naturally I thought of Easter nowand here. I saw your Parade once, and it seemed to me one of the greatsocial spectacles. But you can't keep anything in New York, if it'sgood; if it's bad, you can."

"You come from Boston, I think you said, Mr. Newton," Minver breathedblandly through his smoke.

"Oh, I'm not a _real_ Bostonian," our guest replied. "I'm not abusingyou on behalf of a city that I'm a native proprietor of. If I were, Ishouldn't perhaps make your decadent Easter Parade my point of attack,though I think it's a pity to let it spoil. I came from a part of thecountry where we used to make a great deal of Easter, when we were boys,at least so far as eggs went. I don't know whether the grown peopleobserved the day then, and I don't know whether the boys keep it now; Ihaven't been back at Easter-time for several generations. But when I wasa boy it was a serious thing. In that soft Southwestern latitude thegrass had pretty well greened up by Easter, even when it came in March,and grass colors eggs a very nice yellow; it used to worry me that itdidn't color them green. When the grass hadn't got along far enough,winter wheat would do as well. I don't remember what color onion huskswould give; but we used onion husks, too. Some mothers would let theboys get logwood from the drug-store, and that made the eggs a fine,bold purplish black. But the greatest egg of all was a calico egg, thatyou got by coaxing your grandmother (your mother's mother) or your aunt(your mother's sister) to sew up in a tight cover of brilliant calico.When that was boiled long enough the colors came off in a perfectpattern on the egg. Very few boys could get such eggs; when they did,they put them away in bureau drawers till they ripened and the motherssmelt them, and threw them out of the window as quickly as possible.Always, after breakfast, Easter Morning, we came out on the street andfought eggs. We pitted the little ends of the eggs against one another,and the fellow whose egg cracked the other fellow's egg won it, and hecarried it off. I remember grass and wheat colored eggs in such trialsof strength, and onion and logwood colored eggs; but never calico eggs;_they_ were too precious to be risked; it would have seemed wicked.

"I don't know," the Boston man went musingly on, "why I should rememberthese things so relentlessly; I've forgotten all the important thingsthat happened to me then; but perhaps these were the important things.Who knows? I only know I've always had a soft spot in my heart forEaster, not so much because of the calico eggs, perhaps, as because ofthe grandmothers and the aunts. I suppose the simple life is full ofsuch aunts and grandmothers still; but you don't find them in hotelapartments, or even in flats consisting of seven large, light rooms andbath." We all recognized the language of the advertisements, and laughedin sympathy with our guest, who perhaps laughed out of proportion with apleasantry of that size.

When he had subdued his mirth, he resumed at a point apparently veryremote from that where he had started.

"There was one of those winters in Cambridge, where I lived then, thatseemed tougher than any other we could remember, and they were allpretty tough winters there in those times. There were forty snowfallsbetween Thanksgiving and Fast Day--you don't know what Fast Day is inNew York, and we didn't, either, as far as the fasting went--and thecold kept on and on till we couldn't, or said we couldn't, stand it anylonger. So, along about the middle of March somewhere, we picked up thechildren and started south. In those days New York seemed pretty farsouth to us; and when we got here we found everything on wheels that wehad left on runners in Boston. But the next day it began to snow, and wesaid we must go a little farther to meet the spring. I don't knowexactly what it was made us pitch on Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; but we hada notion we should find it interesting, and, at any rate, a total changefrom our old environment. We had been reading something about theMoravians, and we knew that it was the capital of Moravianism, with thelargest Moravian congregation in the world; I think it was Longfellow's'Hymn of the Moravian Nuns' that set us to reading about the sect; andwe had somehow heard that the Sun Inn, at Bethlehem, was the finestold-fashioned public house anywhere. At any rate, we had the faith ofour youthful years, and we put out for Bethlehem.

"We arrived just at dusk, but not so late that we couldn't see thehospitable figure of a man coming out of the Sun to meet us at theomnibus door and to shake hands with each of us. It was the verypleasantest and sweetest welcome we ever had at a public house; andthough we found the Sun a large, modern hotel, we easily accepted thelandlord's assurance that the old Inn was built up inside of the hotel,just as it was when Washington stayed in it; and after a mighty goodsupper we went to our rooms, which were piping warm from two goodbase-burner stoves. It was not exactly the vernal air we had expected ofBethlehem when we left New York; but you can't have everything in thisworld, and, with the snowbanks along the streets outside, we were veryglad to have the base-burners.

"We went to bed pretty early, and I fell into one of those exemplarysleeps that begin with no margin of waking after your head touches thepillow, or before that, even, and I woke from a dream of heavenly musicthat translated itself into the earthly notes of bugles. It made me situp with the instant realization that we had arrived in Bethlehem onEaster Eve, and that this was Easter Morning. We had read of thebeautiful observance of the feast by the Moravians, and, while I washurrying on my clothes beside my faithful base-burner, I kept quitesuperfluously wondering at myself for not having thought of it, and somade sure of being called. I had waked just in time, though I hadn'tdeserved to do so, and ought, by right, to have missed it all. I triedto make my wife come with me; but after the family is of a certain sizea woman, if she is a real woman, thinks her husband can see things forher, and generally sends him out to reconnoitre and report. Besides, mywife couldn't have left the children without waking them, to tell themshe was going, and then all five of them would have wanted to come withus, including the baby; and we should have had no end of a timeconvincing them of the impossibility. We were a good deal bound up inthe children, and we hated to lie to them when we could possibly avoidit. So I went alone.

"I asked the night porter, who was still on duty, the way I wanted totake, but there were so many people in the streets going the samedirection that I couldn't have missed it, anyhow; and pretty soon wecame to the old Moravian cemetery, which was in the heart of the town;and there we found most of the Moravian congregation drawn up on threesides of the square, waiting and facing the east, which was beginning toredden. Of all the cemeteries I have seen, that was the most beautiful,because it was the simplest and humblest. Generally a cemetery is adreadful place, with headstones and footstones and shafts and tombsscattered about, and looking like a field full of granite and marblestumps from the clearing of a petrified forest. But here all thememorial tablets lay flat with the earth. None of the dead were assumedto be worthier of remembrance than another; they all rested at regularintervals, with their tablets on their breasts, like shields, in theirsleep after the battle of life. I was thinking how right and wise thiswas, and feeling the purity of the conception like a quality of thekeen, clear air of the morning, which seemed to be breathing straightfrom the sky, when suddenly the sun blazed up from the horizon like afire, and the instant it appeared the horns of the band began to blowand the people burst into a hymn--a thousand voices, for all I know. Itwas the sublimest thing I ever heard, and I don't know that there'sanything to match it for dignity and solemnity in any religious rite. Itmade the tears come, for I thought how those people were of a church ofmissionaries and martyrs from the beginning, and I felt as if I werestanding in sight and hearing of the first Christians after Christ. Itwas as if He were risen there 'in the midst of them.'"

Rulledge looked round on the rest of us, with an air of acquiring meritfrom the Bostonian's poetry, but Minver's gravity was proof against thechance of mocking Rulledge, and I think we all felt alike. Wanhopeseemed especially interested, though he said nothing.

"When I went home I told my wife about it as well as I could, but,though she entered into the spirit of it, she was rather preoccupied.The children had all wakened, as they did sometimes, in a body, and werestorming joyfully around the rooms, as if it were Christmas; and she wastrying to get them dressed. 'Do tell them what Easter is like; they'venever seen it kept before,' she said; and I tried to do so, while I tooka hand, as a young father will, and tried to get them into theirclothes. I don't think I dwelt much on the religious observance of theday, but I dug up some of my profane associations with it in early life,and told them about coloring eggs, and fighting them, and all that;there in New England, in those days, they had never seen or heard ofsuch a thing as an Easter egg.

"I don't think my reminiscences quieted them much. They were all onfire--the oldest hoy and girl, and the twins, and even the two-year-oldthat we called the baby--to go out and buy some eggs and get thelandlord to let them color them in the hotel kitchen. I had a deal ofado to make them wait till after breakfast, but I managed, somehow; andwhen we had finished--it was a mighty good Pennsylvania breakfast, suchas we could eat with impunity in those halcyon days: rich coffee, steak,sausage, eggs, applebutter, buckwheat cakes and maple syrup--we gottheir out-door togs on them, while they were all stamping and shoutinground and had to be caught and overcoated, and fur-capped and hoodedsimultaneously, and managed to get them into the street together. Everbeen in Bethlehem?"

We all had to own our neglect of this piece of travel; and Newton, aftera moment of silent forgiveness, said:

"Well, I don't know how it is now, but twenty-five or thirty years agoit was the most interesting town in America. It wasn't the old Moraviancommunity that it had been twenty-five years before that, when none butMoravians could buy property there; but it was like the Sun Hotel, andjust as that had grown round and over the old Sun Inn, the prosperousmanufacturing town, with its iron-foundries and zinc-foundries, and allthe rest of it, had grown round and over the original Moravian village.If you wanted a breath of perfect strangeness, with an American qualityin it at the same time, you couldn't have gone to any place where youcould have had it on such terms as you could in Bethlehem. I can't beginto go into details, but one thing was hearing German spoken everywherein the street: not the German of Germany, but the Pennsylvania German,with its broad vowels and broken-down grammatical forms, and its Englishvocables and interjections, which you caught in the sentences which cameto you, like _av coorse_, and _yes_ and _no_ for _ja_ and _nein_. Therewere stores where they spoke no English, and others where they made aspecialty of it; and I suppose when we sallied out that bright Sundaymorning, with the baby holding onto a hand of each of us between us, andthe twins going in front with their brother and sister, we were almostas foreign as we should have been in a village on the Rhine or the Elbe.

"We got a little acquainted with the people, after awhile, and I heardsome stories of the country folks that I thought were pretty good. Onewas about an old German farmer on whose land a prospecting metallurgistfound zinc ore; the scientific man brought him the bright yellow buttonby which the zinc proved its existence in its union with copper, and theold fellow asked in an awestricken whisper: 'Is it a gold-mine?' 'No,no. Guess again.' 'Then it's a _brass-mine_!' But before they began tofind zinc there in the lovely Lehigh Valley--you can stand by an openzinc-mine and look down into it where the rock and earth are leftstanding, and you seem to be looking down into a range of sharp mountainpeaks and pinnacles--it was the richest farming region in the whole fatState of Pennsylvania; and there was a young farmer who owned a vasttract of it, and who went to fetch home a young wife from Philadelphiaway, somewhere. He drove there and back in his own buggy, and when hereached the top overlooking the valley, with his bride, he stopped hishorse, and pointed with his whip. 'There,' he said, 'as far as the skyis blue, it's all ours!' I thought that was fine."

"Fine?" I couldn't help bursting out; "it's a stroke of poetry."

Minver cut in: "The thrifty Acton making a note of it for future use inliterature."

"Acton will send you a copy with the usual forty-per-cent. discount andten off for cash," the painter said.

They had their little laugh at my expense, and then Newton took up histale again. "Well, as I was saying--By the way, what _was_ I saying?"

The story-loving Rulledge remembered. "You went out with your wife andchildren for Easter eggs."

"Oh yes. Thank you. Well, of course, in a town geographically American,the shops were all shut on Sunday, and we couldn't buy even an Easteregg on Easter Sunday. But one of the stores had the shade of itsshow-window up, and the children simply glued themselves to it in such afascination that we could hardly unstick them. That window was full ofall kinds of Easter things--I don't remember what all; but there wereEaster eggs in every imaginable color and pattern, and besides thesethere were whole troops of toy rabbits. I had forgotten that the naturaloffspring of Easter eggs is rabbits; but I took a brace, and rememberedthe fact and announced it to the children. They immediately demanded anexplanation, with all sorts of scientific particulars, which I gavethem, as reckless of the truth as I thought my wife would suffer withoutcontradicting me. I had to say that while Easter eggs mostly hatchedrabbits, there were instances in which they hatched other things, as,for instance, handfuls of eagles and half-eagles and double-eagles,especially in the case of the golden eggs that the goose laid. They knewall about that goose; but I had to tell them what those unfamiliarpieces of American coinage were, and promise to give them one each whenthey grew up, if they were good. That only partially satisfied them, andthey wanted to know specifically what other kinds of things Easter eggswould hatch if properly treated. Each one had a preference; the babyalways preferred what the last one said; and _she_ wanted an ostrich,the same as her big brother; he was seven then.

"I don't really know how we lived through the day; I mean the children,for my wife and I went to the Moravian church, and had a good longSunday nap in the afternoon, while the children were pining for Mondaymorning, when they could buy eggs and begin to color them, so that theycould hatch just the right kind of Easter things. When I woke up I hadto fall in with a theory they had agreed to between them that any kindof two-legged or four-legged chick that hatched from an Easter egg wouldwear the same color, or the same kind of spots or stripes, that the egghad.

"I found that they had arranged to have calico eggs, and they were goingto have their mother cover them with the same sort of cotton prints thatI had said my grandmother and aunts used, and they meant to buy thecalico in the morning at the same time that they bought the eggs. We hadsome tin vessels of water on our stoves to take the dryness out of thehot air, and they had decided that they would boil their eggs in these,and not trouble the landlord for the use of his kitchen.

"There was nothing in this scheme wanting but their mother's consent--Iagreed to it on the spot--but when she understood that they eachexpected to have two eggs apiece, with one apiece for us, she said shenever could cover a dozen eggs in the world, and that the only way wouldbe for them to go in the morning with us, and choose each the handsomestegg they could out of the eggs in that shop-window. They met thisproposition rather blankly at first; but on reflection the big brothersaid it would be a shame to spoil mamma's Easter by making her work allday, and besides it would keep till that night, anyway, before theycould begin to have any fun with their eggs; and then the rest all saidthe same thing, ending with the baby: and accepted the inevitable withjoy, and set about living through the day as well as they could.

"They had us up pretty early the next morning--that is, they had me up;their mother said that I had brought it on myself, and richly deservedit for exciting their imaginations, and I had to go out with the twooldest and the twins to choose the eggs; we got off from the baby bypromising to let her have two, and she didn't understand very well,anyway, and was awfully sleepy. We were a pretty long time choosing thesix eggs, and I don't remember now just what they were; but they werecertainly joyous eggs; and--By the way, I don't know why I'm boring abrand of hardened bachelors like you with all these domestic details?"

"Oh, don't mind _us_," Minver responded to his general appeal. "We maynot understand the feelings of a father, but we are all mothers atheart, especially Rulledge. Go on. It's very exciting," he urged, notvery ironically, and Newton went on.

"Well, I don't believe I could say just how the havoc began. They putaway their eggs very carefully after they had made their mother admirethem, and shown the baby how hers were the prettiest, and they eachsaid in succession that they must be very precious of them, for if youshook an egg, or anything, it wouldn't hatch; and it was their plan totake these home and set an unemployed pullet, belonging to the bigbrother, to hatching them in the coop that he had built of laths for herin the back yard with his own hands. But long before the afternoon wasover, the evil one had entered Eden, and tempted the boy to try fightingeggs with these treasured specimens, as I had told we boys used to fighteggs in my town in the southwest. He held a conquering course throughthe encounter with three eggs, but met his Waterloo with a regularBluecher belonging to the baby. Then he instantly changed sides; andsmashed his Bluecher against the last egg left. By that time all theother children were in tears, the baby roaring powerfully in ignorantsympathy, and the victor steeped in silent gloom. His mother made himgather up the ruins from the floor, and put them in the stove, and shetook possession of the victorious egg, and said she would keep it tillwe got back to Cambridge herself, and not let one of them touch it. Ican tell you it was a tragical time. I wanted to go out and buy themanother set of eggs, and spring them for a surprise on them in themorning, after they had suffered enough that night. But she said that ifI dared to dream of such a thing--which would be the ruin of thechildren's character, by taking away the consequences of theirfolly--she should do, she did not know what, to me. Of course she wasright, and I gave in, and helped the children forget all about it, sothat by the time we got back to Cambridge I had forgotten about itmyself.

"I don't know what it was reminded the boy of that remaining Easter eggunless it was the sight of the unemployed pullet in her coop, which hevisited the first thing; and I don't know how he managed to wheedle hismother out of it; but the first night after I came home frombusiness--it was rather late and the children had gone to bed--she toldme that ridiculous boy, as she called him in self-exculpation, hadactually put the egg under his pullet, and all the children were wild tosee what it would hatch. 'And now,' she said, severely, 'what are yougoing to do? You have filled their heads with those ideas, and I supposeyou will have to invent some nonsense or other to fool them, and makethem believe that it has hatched a giraffe, or an elephant, orsomething; they won't be satisfied with anything less.' I said we shouldhave to try something smaller, for I didn't think we could manage achick of that size on our lot; and that I should trust in Providence.Then she said it was all very well to laugh; and that I couldn't get outof it that way, and I needn't think it.

"I didn't, much. But the children understood that it took three weeksfor an egg to hatch, and anyway the pullet was so intermittent in herattentions to the Easter egg, only sitting on it at night, or when helddown by hand in the day, that there was plenty of time. One evening whenI came out from Boston, I was met by a doleful deputation at the frontgate, with the news that when the coop was visited that morning afterbreakfast--they visited the coop every morning before they went toschool--the pullet was found perched on a cross-bar in a high state ofnerves, and the shell of the Easter egg broken and entirely eaten out.Probably a rat had got in and done it, or, more hopefully, a mink, suchas used to attack eggs in the town where I was a boy. We went out andviewed the wreck, as a first step towards a better situation; andsuddenly a thought struck me. 'Children,' I said, 'what did you reallyexpect that egg to hatch, anyway?' They looked askance at one another,and at last the boy said: 'Well, you know, papa, an egg that's beencooked--' And then we all laughed together, and I knew they had beenmaking believe as much as I had, and no more expected the impossible ofa boiled egg than I did."

"That was charming!" Wanhope broke out. "There is nothing moreinteresting than the way children join in hypnotizing themselves withthe illusions which their parents think _they_ have created withouttheir help. In fact, it is very doubtful whether at any age we have anyillusions except those of our own creation; we--"

"Let him go on, Wanhope," Minver dictated; and Newton continued.

"It was rather nice. I asked them if their mother knew about the egg;and they said that of course they couldn't help telling her; and I said:'Well, then, I'll tell you what: we must make her believe that the chickhatched out and got away--' The boy stopped me: 'Do you think that wouldbe exactly true, papa?' 'Well, not _exactly_ true; but it's only for thetime being. We can tell her the exact truth afterwards,' and then I laidmy plan before them. They said it was perfectly splendid, and would bethe greatest kind of joke on mamma, and one that she would like as muchas anybody. The thing was to keep it from her till it was done, and theyall promised that they wouldn't tell; but I could see that they werebursting with the secret the whole evening.

"The next day was Saturday, when I always went home early, and I had thetwo oldest children come in with the second-girl, who left them to takelunch with me. They had chocolate and ice-cream, and after lunch wewent around to a milliner's shop in West Street, where my wife and I hadstopped a long five minutes the week before we went to Bethlehem,adoring an Easter bonnet that we saw in the window. I wanted her to buyit; but she said, No, if we were going that expensive journey, wecouldn't afford it, and she must do without, that spring. I showed it tothem, and 'Now, children,' I said, 'what do you think of that for thechick that your Easter egg hatched?' And they said it was the mostbeautiful bonnet they had ever seen, and it would just exactly suitmamma. But I saw they were holding something back, and I said, sharply,'Well?' and they both guiltily faltered out: 'The _bird_, you know,papa,' and I remembered that they belonged to the society of BirdDefenders, who in that day were pledged against the decorative use ofdead birds or killing them for anything but food. 'Why, confound it,' Isaid, 'the bird is the very thing that makes it an Easter-egg chick!'but I saw that their honest little hearts were troubled, and I saidagain: 'Confound it! Let's go in and hear what the milliner has to say.'Well, the long and short of it was that the milliner tried a bunch offorget-me-nots over the bluebird that we all agreed was a thousand timesbetter, and that if it were substituted would only cost three dollarsmore, and we took our Easter-egg chick home in a blaze of glory, thechildren carrying the bandbox by the string between them.

"Of course we had a great time opening it, and their mother acted herpart so well that I knew she was acting, and after the little ones werein bed I taxed her with it. 'Know? Of course I knew!' she said. 'Did youthink they would let you _deceive_ me? They're true New-Englanders, andthey told me all about it last night, when I was saying their prayerswith them.' 'Well,' I said, 'they let you deceive _me_; they must betrue Westerners, too, for they didn't tell me a word of your knowing.' Irather had her there, but she said: 'Oh, you goose--' We were youngpeople in those days, and goose meant everything. But, really, I'mashamed of getting off all this to you hardened bachelors, as I saidbefore--"

"If you tell many more such stories in this club," Minver said,severely, "you won't leave a bachelor in it. And Rulledge will be thefirst to get married."